PERSPECTIVES: New Book–ALL IS CHOICE, Intuitive Readings, Casting

Published: Mon, 01/04/21

PERSPECTIVES

Newsletter of Shepherd Hoodwin and Summerjoy Press

Online Michael Teachings Level I Workshop

I’ve been teaching workshops on the Michael teachings in Europe since 2017. I expect that those will resume in the fall, but for those who can't get to one in person, I will be offering one over Zoom for the first time. The workshops have been described as unforgettable and life-changing. Please let me know if you're interested.

From Channeling Sessions to Intuitive Readings

Channeling is famously hard on the body. I’m finding that after thirty-four years of channeling Michael, I need to reduce how much I do by a great deal. I hope to always channel Michael charts because I feel that they are my most important work. Chart information is extraordinarily and uniquely illuminating. I will, however, no longer be accepting client-initiated orders for individual channeling sessions. I encourage you to do intuitive readings instead, but if you feel that you have a need that only a session with Michael can address, please write to me first and we can discuss it. There may be a waiting list, and I am raising the price to $395 for the first hour of Q&As (the whole basic session averages an hour and forty minutes).

Intuitive readings ($195 for an hour session) are a little more casual and less intense than channeling sessions, but clients still report that they feel much better after them and experience transformation in their lives, and that the information is spot on. I will leave anything pertaining to the Michael teachings for Michael to handle, but after working daily with Spirit for almost forty-five years, my body and energy field have been deeply conditioned as a tool for Spirit's healing in all my sessions.

I am also raising my prices for written channeling to $75 for fifteen minutes, which is good for one to three questions, depending on their depth. I am now offering written intuitive readings for $45 for fifteen minutes. For matters not related to the Michael teachings, please use intuitive readings. A half-hour live session is $110. Hourly sessions other than channeling and intuitive readings are still $150/hr. (Past life therapy sessions go two hours.) I will continue to do written channeling for your "trues" (true play, rest, study, and work, along with life task) for $60, and a profile of your soul connection with another person, also for $60. They are not on the order form; you can use the Misc. field to order them and attach or email me a note. Charts are now $90 ($80 when ten or more are ordered together). I don't wish to exclude anyone from having their Michael chart due to finances, so if you can't afford that, write to me and I'll work with you.

Many of you don’t know about the other work I do:

Past-life therapy takes you back to lifetimes either in need of healing or that can contribute strengths to your current lifetime. These sessions usually go about two hours.

I offer written chart explanations that are like mini-Michael books tailored to your chart. These are ideal for people who don’t have the time or inclination to do a great deal of study in order to understand their charts. Students also get a sense about how their various traits interact and affect their career, hobbies, and aspirations. They are about 13,000 words and are $225, in addition to the chart itself. Here is an example.

I also do chart consultations in which you can ask questions about several charts and about the teachings in general.

In addition, I do counseling that combines advice and self-help exercises for releasing old blocks, perhaps more quickly than one might through standard talk therapy by going directly into the block’s energy.

Finally, I do channeling coaching for those who are already making a connection with a guide or teacher but need help refining their technique and validating what is coming through.

New Michael Teachings Article on Casting

In the Michael teachings, there is a concept called "casting." There are two kinds: Initial and Raw Number. Here is a new piece that explains the differences. I now include raw numbers on Michael charts. In addition, I have posted a raw numbers chart, JP Van Hulle's channeling about Global Jobs and Community Responsibilities, and Varda Hasselmann's channeling about the seven Paths of the Soul.

Series of Interviews on

Big Hormone Enneagram Podcast

I'm not very familiar with the Enneagram but, like the Michael teachings, it is a fascinating and complex personality system. The first Michael channel, Sarah Chambers, was in a Fourth Way (Gurdjieff) group for a while, and some of their terms made their way into the Michael teachings, although defined differently: essence, centers, chief features (obstacles), and body types. Likewise, the Enneagram of Personality also descended from a student of Gurdjieff.

The five people interviewing me are becoming avid Michael students, too, and it's a lot of fun to talk with them about the Michael charts, channeling, and the teachings in general.

The first one launches Tuesday, January 5. Subscribe at Apple or Spotify. It's also available on Youtube and other places podcasts are posted. Just search for my name.

NEW BOOK!

The word “choice” appears eighty times in the first Michael book, Messages from Michael by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and one hundred seventy-five times in More Messages from Michael. Members of the group of students portrayed in the Yarbro books sometimes lamented hearing yet another lecture about choice from Michael. I’ve been a Michael channel and student since 1986, yet only recently have I begun to grasp how profound, multi-faceted, and far-reaching the concept that “All is choice” really is.

I hope that this short (11,000 word) book will empower you to make choices more consciously and help you to create a life permeated with love, truth, and beauty.

Topics include the limits of reality creation, reason, self-validation, predictions, the role of feeling, priorities, consciously choosing, blaming the victims, the karmic wheel, what we have the right to choose, what we don’t have the right to choose, others’ right to choose, incarnational choice, government, religion, guides, and more.

Below is chapter one. The whole book is available on Kindle for $2.99 and paperback for $8.95.

I always greatly appreciate reviews on Amazon and any feedback you wish to offer me.

WHY IS CHOICE SO IMPORTANT?

By Shepherd Hoodwin

According to the Michael teachings, we are, at our core, an eternal spark of the Tao (or Source). We decided to have an adventure on Earth, and created a new essence as our vehicle. We began our journey as humans on the physical plane. When we are complete with that phase, we will gradually ascend through the higher six planes, activating more layers of our essence, until we’re back home full time in the Tao. This loop from the Tao and back again is a grand cycle.

The lower part of our essence is our soul, which collects our physical plane experiences. It created our current and past-life personalities, and will create those in any future lifetimes. In our first lifetime, our soul is totally inexperienced. Gradually, it moves from being wholly a creation to being a co-creator with our spark partly through learning how to make choices, which generate experiences. We see the results of our choices and can make adjustments, becoming more skillful as we go along.

It is similar to how creativity works in the arts. For example, composers try a series of chords, listen to them, and perhaps try something different until the result is as pleasing as they can make it. Perhaps they study with teachers who suggest things they hadn’t thought of, and that expands their range of creativity.

Will Rogers, the great American humorist, said, “Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.” In other words, we all make a lot of mistakes on the way to learning how to navigate life more skillfully. Even the greatest composers try a lot of wrong notes before finding those that work. Most of their mature works are more skillful and substantial than their early ones. Prodigies such as Mozart were quite accomplished at an early age; the likeliest explanation is that they developed a lot of their skill in past lives. But even with Mozart, his late works were more profound. If we don’t get to make our own choices and therefore our own mistakes, we cannot develop mastery.

Another analogy: The Tao is like parents who have children (essences) that they plan to take into the family business. As newborns, they must be cared for, but as they grow, they learn the business until they can help run it. If the children never take any responsibility and make decisions, they don’t learn. Some are fond of saying that we are children of God, but would any parent want its offspring to stay children forever?

Prior to each lifetime, the soul creates a personality made up of overleaves, which are traits designed to give the soul the specific kinds of experiences it wants to have in that lifetime. The body, parental imprinting, astrology, and other factors also shape the personality. As a newborn baby, our personality, like the new soul, was totally without experience, although to some degree, we always draw upon the experience of our soul and spark — they can be seen in the background. As we mature and have experiences, our personality increasingly becomes a co-creator with them — like the soul, it becomes more skillful in making choices.

In the Genesis creation story, it says that God formed humans from dust and breathed life into it. That is how all creation works. We start with raw material. For a painter, that might be a blank canvas and paints. For a writer, that might be a new word processing document. They are inert until we breathe life into them. When we create something that lives, the creation goes on to become a creator. A work of art has a life of its own apart from the artist, perhaps provoking thought or inspiring reflection. It has its own relationship with those who interact with it. It has an energy. I knew of a blind man who used to go to art museums, stand in front of paintings, and feel their energy. He raved to a friend of mine how she had to see the Van Gogh exhibit at the Met!

Every creation expands the creator. The Tao expands by creating universes (and essences within them) that then go on to become co-creators. Essences expand through the soul’s creation of personalities. Even after the body that first housed the personality dies, it continues to have experiences and grow on the astral plane (where we go between lifetimes), co-creating with essence until it is fully integrated into it and goes dormant as a sort of subpersonality of essence that enriches it.

We are large, multifaceted beings. Different parts of us are responsible for different kinds of choices. Our spark chose our essence traits, our soul sets up our lifetimes, and our personality has primary responsibility for the specifics of our lifetime, being on the “front lines.” The personality itself is multifaceted, and different parts of it handle different kinds of choices. Ideally, however, personality works in harmony with essence to make the best possible choices. Essence is already in unity with our core, or spark, so that results in wholeness. When we are in our true identity as our whole self, we understand that “I” made all these choices. We take responsibility for all of them, even if we do not yet fully understand them or have mastery of them.

Many people identify as being their body, or an ego in a bag of skin, as Alan Watts put it. They are cut off from their essence, which is frustrating for both essence and personality. However, every situation brings experiences and therefore can eventually be used for growth. When there are breakthroughs, when personality opens to essence, it can be thrilling, and essence will have learned about going from being imprisoned in an unresponsive personality to freedom. Ultimately, no experience need be wasted.

We are constantly making choices. We choose actions, words, attitudes, etc., both on conscious and unconscious levels. As we evolve, we move more of our choices from being unconscious to being conscious, and access a broader palette of possibilities. We make our choices more artistically, bringing more beauty into the world. Some choices are more significant than others, but seemingly small choices can have a large impact. Every choice is important as practice for creating.

For example, some people have found that keeping a record of all the money they spend and reviewing it regularly has made them more conscious of their financial choices. Maybe they were surprised by some of them and decided to make changes. Perhaps they created a budget, but simply becoming more conscious of our spending might be enough to bring our finances into better balance.

All humans are evolving simply due to the fact that we’re having experiences. When we choose with awareness, engaging with our full faculties, including reason, we make better choices, with more pleasant outcomes, and grow relatively quickly through joy. When we choose on autopilot, we grow relatively slowly, through pain. Either way, the evolution of consciousness is a very long, complex process. If it were quick and simple, we’d only need one lifetime!

(People generally take 100–200 lifetimes to complete the physical plane, depending on their average lifespan, speed of moving through the thirty-five soul age levels, and personal preference. The fewest I know of is 37, and a “specialist in infant mortality” I channeled for has had 1500 lives.)

Good choices could be defined as those that bring positive results and that we still feel good about later. We ourselves are the final arbiter of whether a particular choice we made was the best possible one, and sometimes that is not clear until much later. However, being mindful during the process of making choices tends to bring better results.

Often, many possible choices are pretty equal in terms of probable outcomes. Job A might have a different set of pros and cons than Job B, but when they’re all added up, they might have similar tallies. And there might not be an ideal or “perfect” choice in a given situation. Simply making the best choice we can at least keeps us moving forward so that new choices can present themselves.

There is a saying that “You create your own reality from your core beliefs.” Our core beliefs shape our energy, thoughts, and feelings, which influence our choices, which largely create our reality. For example, we will make different choices if we believe that the world is against us than if we believe that the world supports us, and different life experiences will result.

We all have some negative, false core beliefs that limit us, many of which we are unaware. Becoming aware of them and changing them to be in alignment with truth can considerably accelerate our growth and improve our life. There are many techniques for accessing, exploring, and shifting our core beliefs directly. We can also change them from the outside in by being more aware of our choices and making them more from positive, true beliefs. For example, we can choose to act from the premise that we live in a benevolent, abundant universe even if we don’t yet feel it.

True beliefs, those that are in harmony with the larger universe, are based in love and are naturally positive and constructive. There is much negativity in humanity, and we don’t benefit from being in Pollyanna-ish denial of that. However, improving life on earth requires that we reach outside the closed system of human negativity and bring in the fresh air of universal love, truth, and beauty that are the basis of life.

For those on a conscious spiritual path, the essential question when considering a choice is whether it is aligned with love, truth, and beauty and serves the highest good. This principle is the spiritual half of choice-making, and it is relatively simple and straightforward when we have a clear sense of what those qualities look and feel like. However, the material half — its application — is complex. A person can be purely loving in intention and still blunder through life. Practical considerations are specific to each situation. Mastering the art of living is an endless task that demands a great deal of knowledge, insight, experience, and skill. We live in a complicated, everchanging world, and there is always more to learn about it to enable increasingly better choices. We practice the art of living by making choices over many lifetimes.

Shepherd Hoodwin

https://shepherdhoodwin.com

[email protected]